


Flowers Never Pick Themselves

by Lliyk



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Attempt at Humor, But also, Canon Compliant, Drama, F/M, Ficlet Collection, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, POV Aang (Avatar), Polyamory, Romance, Soulmate AU, Time Skips, Zutaraang Week 2020, prompted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:01:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26222287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lliyk/pseuds/Lliyk
Summary: Soulmate AU where your soulmate’s first words to you appear at age sixteen.For Zutaraang Week 2020.The morning air is rich with ozone and sweetwater, the wildflower clearing hush. Aang can taste the beginning of rain winds on the back of his tongue, heavy and refreshing. Zuko says that he always meditates on rainy days and asks Aang to join him, so they sit with their backs to Appa in front of a small fire, matching each other’s breathing. Zuko tells him another secret.“I fear that I am a selfish man, Aang. When you said that ridiculous response—” A smile flickers and dies on Zuko’s mouth, a mere flash of teeth. “I should have told you right away but I wanted this time with you.” Zuko’s fingers hover over where white words lay under his tunic. “I’m sorry.”Aang asks a question that has crossed his mind but once. “How long have you had my words?”Zuko lets out a strained laugh.“I was born with them.”
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Aang/Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Aang/Zuko (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 176
Collections: Zutaraang Week





	1. Jealousy

**Author's Note:**

> i see some of you were expecting [Plot A](https://slpytea.tumblr.com/post/626330538246111232/its-5am-on-813-and-i-just-found-out-that). little did y’all know that poll was for the bonus prompt... 
> 
> this is a story compromised of related ~~drabbles~~ ficlets, though length does vary! **rated m** for safety bc my hand just [clenches fist] _loves_ to slip.
> 
> Day One — Jealousy  
> Day Two — Secrets  
> Day Three — Avatar State  
> Day Four — Tea  
> Day Five — Steamy  
> Day Six — Worship  
> Day Seven — Stars  
>    
> **comments are ♡.**

* * *

On his sixteenth birthday the healers at the temple check him from tattooed head to tattooed toe, poking and prodding along the way and scribbling notes onto their clipboards.

“Maybe you’re a late bloomer.” They smile tentatively at him. “It happens. Don’t worry about it too much.”

When he asks Monk Gyatso about it during training that very same evening, Gyatso smiles at him too.

“I never bloomed.” Gyatso says. “I am still happy.”

Aang feels his wavering anticipation and excitement curdle into a sad blankness. It turns into a simmering hot feeling that he’s never felt before when Zaheer, a distant kid that sleeps three beds down from him, bursts into the room with a large smile on his face after dessert.

“Look!” Zaheer lifts his shirt and spins around. “Look!”

The other boys scramble towards him. _“Be careful what you wish for,”_ one of them reads out loud. It’s ominous and a little strange, but it’s there. Zaheer drops his shirt, giddy and excited and stars in his eyes. “ _I_ have a soulmate!” He grins. “ _Me_.”

The others congratulate him and launch a thousand questions. Aang offers as much of a smile as he can when their gazes meet, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

Zaheer is fourteen.


	2. Secrets

* * *

At twenty one, the words _“I’ve been looking everywhere for you”_ write themselves down his inner right arm in red. It happens on a bright and sunny day while he is in the plains of Kyoshi, resting from learning ways of his past. He doesn’t notice, of course. He is too busy brushing dirt from the hide of his flying bison.

 _“Oh.”_ He looks up from where his mentor, Suki, has dropped the bucket of fresh water he’s asked for. “Your _arm—_ ” there’s alarm in her voice so he jolts back and flips his arms over, just in time to catch the ending of the neatest calligraphy he’s ever seen disappear under a patch of dirt.

The scrubbing brush Aang is holding hits the lawn at his bare feet with a dull _thunk_ , his fingers shaking as he slowly bends away the caking soil. He is so sure that his heart has already stopped that he forgets to jump when Suki lays a hand on his shoulder, for how quickly he’d forgotten that she is there. A look of both muted empathy and joy shapes her features; she has had her words, blue, since she was sixteen like most others, but she has yet to meet her soulmate.

Aang looks at the red script the whole way to the beaches where he seeks reprieve, dazed, lifting and dropping the unfolded sleeve of his borrowed emerald tunic with gusts of caught winds to see edges of the last characters, just to ensure that they are truly there. He is so _disbelieving_ that it’s real—half a decade of meditative bated breaths and gingerly thinning optimism, _waiting_ —that he nearly lands on the only other person standing near the edge of the water.

He stumbles as he snaps his glider shut, mouth fixed for an apology as he tries to right himself, but the stranger wraps an arm around his waist in a steadying hold and sends his heart scattering before he can dare to speak.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”


	3. Avatar State

* * *

Aang’s world has tilted on its axis. 

He has been taking his time to find a proper firebending teacher for over a year now, having completed his education with Master Toph of the Beifong Family; hence his time in Kyoshi. His new teacher comes in the form of a golden-eyed man named Zuko, weary from travel and long distanced from the Fire Nation in the midst of dealings yet to be specified. Zuko is no ordinary firebending teacher, either—he is a solemn Master that can write white lightning into the air like kanji, as blinding as storms. He also sports the words, just as white, “ _Orange you glad you found me”_ across the shadow of his left collarbone.

Even the universe requires entertainment. He tries not to think too seriously on how completely _disbelieving_ and then _amused_ Zuko’s face had been when he’d stupidly blurted the joke. It does not work, for it is quickly becoming his favorite memory.

In days they have abandoned Kyoshi for elsewhere in the Earth Kingdom, though not far, to occupy rooms just west of Gaoling, close enough to the woodlands where they can spar at dawn and share private things at night. This eve they rest against Appa’s side shoulder to shoulder, in a large clearing of wildflowers, soaking up the last of the sun after a full day of trading decidedly less careful blows.

“Were you really looking for me?” Aang musters up the courage to finally ask. His hope feels strange in his chest; he is _already_ _happy_ and the answer does _not_ matter, but he still wishes to know. “Why?”

“I heard that the Avatar was staying in Kyoshi when we docked,” Zuko’s touch is feather-light over the red calligraphy on his arm, up and over to his blue tattoos. “I thought, _‘it will be an honor’_ —and there you were. _Flying_...”

Aang wants to ask about who “ _we”_ is, but his focus is suddenly on the cut of Zuko’s jaw; the tilt of his mouth and the line of his scar, origin yet to be discussed, and how new warmth unfurls like petals behind his sacral chakra. Aang looks at Zuko through the sudden galaxies in his eyes, the awareness of ten thousand lifetimes vibrating up his spine. Zuko whispers up at him in wonderous awe, a tender and rugged vision in the lingering white wash of his brimming aura. Aang kisses Zuko for the first time, then, urged by indescribable need of all that is himself and all that is not. It isn’t until the kiss is over; until the glow has stopped, that Aang realizes his chakra has _opened._

 _I have a soulmate_ , it dawns just as Zuko starts to kiss away half a decade’s worth of agony from his cheeks. He remembers that there had been stars in Zaheer’s eyes, too. _I have a soulmate. Me._

  
  



	4. Tea

* * *

The morning air is rich with ozone and sweetwater, the wildflower clearing hush. Aang can taste the beginning of rain winds on the back of his tongue, heavy and refreshing. Zuko says that he always meditates on rainy days and asks Aang to join him, so they sit with their backs to Appa in front of a small fire, matching each other’s breathing. Zuko tells him another secret.

“There is another reason. Why I was looking for you, that is.” There’s a seriousness about him that makes Aang dial back the simmering bliss in his own demeanor as he opens his eyes. He does not know _serious_ Zuko, is unfamiliar with that furrow currently wrought in his brow. He does not know what to say when _Prince_ Zuko tells him that he’d been tasked with delivering an invite from both Fire Lord Iroh and the Fire Sages; that is _uncle_ insisted that the prince should assume the duty as the Avatar’s firebending teacher. “I fear that I am a selfish man, Aang. When you said that ridiculous response—” A smile flickers and dies on Zuko’s mouth, a mere flash of teeth. “I should have told you right away but I wanted this time with you.” Zuko’s fingers hover over where white words lay under his tunic. “I’m sorry.”

Aang asks a question that has crossed his mind but once. “How long have you had my words?”

Zuko lets out a strained laugh. 

“I was born with them.” 

A prince with a joke... Thunder rumbles in the distance. Aang laughs at the very same moment that a drizzle of rain blows their way; he comes to the abrupt conclusion that the universe must be _bored_. “I got mine minutes before I met you,” he says softly, only able to offer a wry grin to Zuko’s look of hard shock, then, as regal as Prince Zuko because _he’s_ Avatar Aang: “I accept.”

At night, as Aang and only Aang, he shows his soulmate that the only way to fester a bond is to perform lovable acts and thus acts out of love; the _Prince_ had tried to remain, a clear line of separation from what they have already built in light of his acceptance, and _that_ Aang refuses to have. _“I want you,”_ he whispers it repeatedly down the curve of Zuko’s throat, because in the reality of it he is just as selfish, greedily drinks in every vibration of every desperate sound that Zuko makes and stores it away, never to be lost to him again. “I want _you_ , Zuko. I _always_ have.”

Caldera is more beautiful than he remembers from trips with Gyatso in his youth—he leaves Appa on the deck of Zuko’s ship to see it, bathed in rising sunlight as it is, from the comfort of his glider. It helps that Fire Lord Iroh, who he likes so immediately that it throws him off, welcomes him into the Fire Nation with a cup of ginger and mint tea instead of a massive party of Sages and advisors. He’d had enough of that from the Beifong Family, Master Toph notwithstanding. “This is your home, Aang.” Lord Iroh tells him. There is a glitter in his eye that wakes the deja vu of a lifetime before his own. “Home is the starting place of love and comfort, and love fuels fire well. It would be detrimental to welcome you otherwise.” 

_Home_ doesn’t start to sink in until the days after he learns of Roku, does not settle even in the joys of Zuko teaching him creative ways on how to use heat, or memorize the tunnels that run in the crooks of the palace walls. Not for years yet, even as he learns to love the traditions, the foods, of playing at court and rallying the spirit of people anew. No—it isn’t until at twenty three and on short reprieve, he spots the body of a woman floating in, lifeless, wrapped in white, on the moonlit waves of Ember Island’s shores, why home never feels like _home_ makes sense. He hovers over her just as the distant, panicked shout of Zuko’s voice reaches him over the evening winds.

Aang reaches out for her. _“Please be alive.”_

Blue eyes, alight with shock that matches his own. A gasp of fear that he will never want to hear again.

_“Spirits.”_


	5. Steamy

* * *

Heir Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, Daughter of Chieftain Kya and Chief Hakoda, had been sleeping in the ocean. _Moonbathing_ , she’d stated plainly. Her family vacation house was just up the bank, but she was alone there for the season. Aang only found out after he’d finally managing to look up from the single blue word that had appeared on the center of his inner left arm and ask her.

“Who _sleeps_ in the _ocean?”_ Zuko blurted.

 _A Princess apparently,_ Aang had almost answered him, but then he’d recognized it: the completely _disbelieving_ and then _amused_ look that had crossed Katara’s face, and the first realization had faded as quickly as it came to make way for another. _I have two soulmates_ , he’d thought, dumbfounded. He thinks those words often even now, for he is sure now more than ever that the universe does in fact jest. He touches the raised, swirling script of The Tribes on his skin absently. Katara has had his words on her left rib since she was sixteen, but she had gotten Zuko’s on her right only two summers ago. _“_ Oh _.”_ He’d laughed to himselves, for the timing had not escaped him. _“Oh. Spirits.”_

Aang has always known that he has more love to give than most. Something about being the Avatar in that, the Fire Sages tell him. Threesomes in matings are not entirely unheard of in the history of the Avatar. To this, he tells the Sages of the Air Monks, of Gyatso and his many lovers; makes a vow to spread the ways of the Nomads far, deep, and wide when he realizes just how little the other nations seem to acknowledge about Nomad cultures. His soulmates are much more accepting of his polyamorous upbringing, _eager_ to learn, even—he sees it in fleeting touches and lingering looks more and more every day—yet they are just as hard as the Sages to persuade that it is without consequence to be intimate with one another, without _him_ , though he is finally getting there.

It has been two full moon cycles since that night on Ember Island. Now they occupy newly gifted two story apartments in the upper eastern wing of the Fire Palace, a space meant for families; a gift from Lord Iroh decorated by Princess Ursa, he comes to find, who discretely reminds him that fire feeds well on love. Now, Aang watches in the large mirror along the wall of their private spring as Katara places her first tentative kiss to the bunched, wavy blue line of ink that rests opposite his own wispy lettering on Zuko’s chest. Katara had not said anything in response to his—very reasonable—outburst. She’d just _laughed_ at him. Laughed until tears had run down her face.

 _Laugh lines_ , the Sages told them, _are rare_.

“And firebenders sunbathe,” Katara had answered Zuko eventually, and _that_ had not been lost on him either. “Is this okay?” She asks now, sapphire eyes bright with lingering hesitancy and building desire. Aang sees Zuko’s fingers curl into a fist just under the water as his soft moan echoes around the space, and Aang demurely ensures to Katara that she’s doing well; to place kisses on the shadow of Zuko’s left collarbone in his stead. Zuko fits his hands around Katara’s waist and lifts her above the steaming waters, high and flush to his chest so that he can tilt his mouth up and work licks and nips down the line of her neck. Aang laughs quietly at the deepening blush on Katara’s cheeks when she catches his eye in the mirror, and he offers a lopsided grin in the looking glass before silently slipping away. As much as he _would_ like to watch—to _learn_ , to soak up every interaction like sun rays on his skin—he knows that their moment rests on delicate strings, and he dares not pluck at them.

Instead he tucks the image away and joins Princess Ursa, Prince Lu Ten, and Princess Azula, who is visiting home from university in Ba Sing Se, for lunch and tea in the reaching shade trees of the northern palace gardens. “You again,” Princess Azula raises an eyebrow at him. They are early, as they have been since a few days after her arrival. Aang had been surprised to find an excellent sparring partner in the snappy-mouthed princess, and they’d taken to trading shots of fire before being seated with everyone. “where is my brother? And your _waterbender_ , Avatar Aang. I was hoping to meet her.”

“No you weren’t. And she’s not just _any_ waterbender, _Zulie_. You will use her name.” Aang steals Azula’s steaming cup of tea right from her hands and into his own with a well placed grip of air. He downs it and grins at Azula’s indignant gasp, resting the teacup and dodging a ball of fire to the back of his head. He saunters into the middle of the courtyard, laughing—how much she reminds him of days spent getting into trouble at the Air Temples. “How many times have I told you to call _me_ ’brother’?”

“You’ve used that nickname for the _last_ time, _Avatar._ ” Smoke plumes from Azula’s nostrils, her mouth angry but her eyes bright as she takes up stance across from him. “I know your age. Don’t act so informal just because you’ve lived a thousand lifetimes.”

“Ten thousand.” Aang corrects.

Already the air simmers with the clear vapor of heat. Aang grins as he hears Lu Ten’s distant call to not singe the rose bushes, and laughter pours out of him when Azula does just that, feigning accident, soon followed by Lady Ursa’s stern shouting. He wonder’s only briefly what his own mother must have sounded like; he is too busy reveling in that wonderful thing of a feeling that slides into place behind his heart. Suddenly he’s hearing Iroh behind old layers of Roku, and he recognizes it just as he begins to match Azula blue flame after blue flame. 

_This is your home, Aang._


	6. Worship

* * *

By winter, the Avatar masters firebending, and in similar fashion to the Earth Kingdom the Fire Nation calls for ceremony and celebration. The evening of the solstice finds Aang high on a dais in front of an enthusiastic palace crowd, twisting into the sway of a stolen kata. Lightning is gathering at his fingertips, bright and exhilarating as the heat courses through his body. A grin splits his face as the energy arcs around him. The firebending forms had never felt quite right for the movement of chi lightning seemed to require of him; had it not been for Zuko’s alternative lesson on its deflection for his passing of his mastery test, he would have never gotten the idea to observe Katara. It had occurred to him, then, after he’d challenged her to a spar in the middle of the practice forms he’d asked to see—and after being so _thoroughly_ pummeled into the ground for interrupting her—that he had never _seen_ Katara waterbend offensively but only to heal—and in truth, he had never planned to, for just because she _was_ a Master did not mean that she was _his._ It is simply not how he was raised to think.

Not to say that he has not thought it.

He is sure of it now, as the sky erupts with beautiful streams of pure, concentrated electricity; as the taste of static touches his tongue and the next bolt thunders across the night. He is sure that Katara is meant to be his Master in the same way that he is sure the universe is saying _I told you so_.

“You’re loving this, aren’t you?” Katara jests later from behind him on a topless carriage—soulmates, if any, are of course allowed to participate fully in all festivities, and they are currently being paraded around the streets of Caldera. He silently vows to repeat that question for her later as he waves to the passing crowds; when he makes to thank her properly for her guidance. Next to her Zuko also sits seiza, eyes alight with familiar and fond exasperation. “Trust me,” Zuko tells Katara. “He is.”

Perhaps he will make Zuko watch? Aang shakes himself of the thought as a group of children with painted arrows on their hands run forward. _Perhaps_ striking lightning leaves him a little too excited.

“I am a firebending Master thanks to you.” Aang says once they have had their fill of entertainment for the night. Home is a balm to his still frazzled nerves, and he’s finally able to pepper kisses down Katara’s spine as he has wanted to since catching the awed gleam in her eye after the ceremony—Fire Nation winters were nothing compared to the South Pole, she’d said, and she’d taken on the night in a backless gold and red ensemble to match his traditional Nomad robes. The intricate swirls of Tui and La inked along her spine, the marking of her own mastery, had begged his touch. “I am not sure I would have passed if it wasn’t for your help.”

“And I’m a boarcupine,” Zuko interjects from where he lounges, just as nude, at the edge of the bed. Katara bursts into giggles under him, blooming saccharine warmth and adoration in his chest, but he wants to hear her _other_ sounds right now. Needs to hear them. 

“Later, I promise.” Aang murmurs as he trails heated hands up Katara’s thighs. He hums in agreement when her gasp reaches his ears and lightning flashes before his mind. Heat pours into the room and from his place Zuko echoes his hum of agreement; Katara bows prettily for him under the work of his heated hands, twists and arches like the kata he’d stolen. The wisping white of _Please be alive_ peeks from under the fall of her unbound curls, and it begs his touch, too.

He will have kissed all of her thrice over by sunrise, if Zuko lets him have his way.

By then he is looking at Katara through the galaxies in his eyes, her umber skin aglow with the angled rays of his gaze in the face of his plexus chakra blossoming open. He wonders if Zuko’s words had flashed as Katara’s word does. _Spirits,_ in the brightest, brightest of whites.

_I told you so._


	7. Stars

* * *

Aang has seen the South Pole before—it is only a hop, skip, and a decent glide away from his childhood home after all—but he has never seen it like this. As a child he had only ever come to play in the open eastern wilds of the ice land, to chase friends down cliffs and sled with penguins. As an adult, as the _Avatar_ , he is almost ashamed to have not stopped to study and admire all that is the Kingdom of West Ridge, the beautiful staccato of towering palace structures embedded into the snow caps that spills past the edges of the ice and right into the ocean. The rising spring sun shatters faint rainbows through the crystalline towers and down into the igloo villages surrounding its feet, in which they have arrived at the piers of. It is no longer a wonder why Katara had insisted they travel by sea; the view from the water is unmatched by the view from the air. Had they flown in, they would have missed the palace and the swirling carvings of wolves, koi, dragons, and thunderbirds that crawl up the mountain’s face.

“The Water Tribes revere dragons?” Zuko asks in awe. Together they stand at the lip of the ship’s deck where Appa rests, staring ahead in fluctuating anticipation. This will be their first time meeting _Katara’s_ family. Gyatso had insisted they not worry when they’d left the Southern Isles just days before, but Aang knows that they share a mutual nervousness. Zuko might be a prince and he himself might be the Avatar, but Katara isn’t just Katara—she’s _Heir Katara,_ the future Mother of her people and all of the lands surrounding. “Of course,” Katara laughs, and it carries clear among the nearing ice. “surely you’re aware that not all dragons are born of _fire_ , Prince Zuko.”

Zuko’s blush matches Aang’s own silent embarrassment—he’s ridden water serpents and heard old stories of wingspans in the empty seas but not once has he considered such lores to be plausible. The embarrassment fades when they meet Katara’s family; Heir Sokka, _just Sokka at home_ , he says, is a familiar face for both Zuko and himself among the curious glances of other palace goers; for years, they have seen him in and out of meetings with Prince Lu Ten without knowing who he was, and Zuko shares a _look_ with him once they make the connection. At dinner, Zuko is brave enough to ask about the dragons again, and Chieftain Kya and Chief Hakoda are kind enough to tell such stories around the evening’s bonfire themselves as they share chilled wine with dessert. 

Many gather as Chieftain Kya’s voice raises and booms with the call to Listen. Aang smiles to himself as the deja vu of a lifetime before his unfolds and coats his senses. It settles into his bones, an echo of content, happiness, and _home_.

“Pay attention,” Katara murmurs to him from her spot under Zuko’s arm. They sit on a raised slab covered in furs behind him from where he has taken up a cushion at Zuko’s legs. “Some of these stories will actually be a part of your waterbending teachings. Our bending is _very_ intimately related with our Tales. Each has their lesson, and each has their path to power—some of which are even considered to be unthinkable. Some of which are only available _here_. It’s best to let you absorb them and formulate your own understanding before teaching you what _I_ know.” Aang knows then that _Master_ Katara will be nothing like _their_ Katara once his training officially starts. “You must be willing to change as the water does, Aang. To intermingle just as our Tales do, or you will never learn.” A small grin breaks out across her face just as Chief Hakoda lowers his voice dramatically and steps into the light of the fire. “Plus, my parents are _really_ good at Story Telling.”

“Yes, Sifu.” Aang says demurely. He feels more than hears Zuko’s rumble of amusement as a blush spreads across Katara’s nose, and Aang makes his own fond sound as she hides behind her wine glass. “Guys. I can see _and_ hear you.” Sokka stage whispers from their right. Katara flushes to her roots and promptly flicks droplets of wine into his face, and the distant feeling of _home_ solidifies as the four of them erupt into barely contained snickers. In Chief Hakoda’s Tale Aang hears that ice breathing dragons helped bring the wind to the Tribe’s first sails, of how the ocean is jealous of the sun and of how some wolves have wings. When the Story Telling ends and the sun finally, finally sinks, Katara lets them wander around her rooms and ask a thousand and one questions about her things. They bathe and change into their nightclothes but Katara does not let them fall into her lavish bed of navy silks and downy blankets; she bends a sect of ice away from the wall to reveal a set of curving stairs and flashes them a secret smile.

“ _Sneaky_.” Zuko mouths the word to him as they follow.

 _“I love you,”_ Katara says to them for the first time under the clear ice of the atrium she’s brought them to. Above them the stars sink behind a blanket of swirling green lights, _aurora australis_ , she’d called the phenomenon. Next to him Zuko _warms_ , the torchlight around them blazing, bright and abrupt. Aang thinks he might see galaxies reflected in the shadow of Katara’s steady gaze, and he pulls her to him before she can say it again because _he’s_ sneaky too, but that doesn’t stop her, or Zuko for that matter. In the waning hours of the night beneath the foxfire swirl of the aurora, Aang sees Zuko and Katara through the galaxies that spill from his own eyes. His heart chakra unlocks—the _last_ —and this time the universe does not jest. It welcomes him with open arms, with untold adoration and a love that he carries back with him to his body. It leaves him raw and breathless and _happy_ , the warmth of stars simmering in his veins. Just as it is meant to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and they lived happily ever after (because that’s what they deserve & no i am not accepting arguments) <3
> 
> zutaraang week bonus prompt: _**beach.**_


End file.
